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OP-ED

The cathedral that Ismail Kadare bequeathed

Politiko 2024-07-03 13:53:54
The cathedral that Ismail Kadare bequeathed

Alfred Lela

Australian professor Mark Burry called Antoni Gaudí 's Sagrada Familia 'the first cathedral on Mars,' which means here not only a magnificent building but also out of place. It may sound hyperbolic to say that Ismail Kadare was such a 'cathedral on Mars'; with the deed more than with the personality, in Albania of 45 years of dictatorship and 30 years of democracy.

He entered Albanian literature at a time when three main currents and a dozen literary efforts stood out in its landscape, starting from folk songs, parody, and especially the light industry of poetry. All three significant currents can be considered engaged literature. The first is the Catholic literature of Shkodra (or that of Arbëresh in Italy), which builds through Christian-moral-patriotic commitment, with some rare exceptions such as de Rada, who writes a mainly lyrical poem, where nationalism is manifested through longing for the homeland.

The second is what can be described as the iconoclastic engagement or a new world, represented more distinctly by Migjeni and some other less critical authors of the time (who did not stand the test of time).

The third would be the ruling current in Albanian literature, the well-known socialist realism, which began its journey a little earlier than enfant terrible Ismail Kadare entered Albanian literature in the early 60s.

Kadare's literary genius is the understanding that he should not have been in these currents. To put it with Gaudí, in a Barcelona with many churches, transgressions, and claims, the 'first cathedral on Mars' had to be built. Kadare's work, from the first poems of boyish shyness to the shocking novels and essays of his mastery, is the cathedral in Mars that he raised for Albanians and the world. Just at the time when Albania's churches were demolished, its literature was trashed, and individual freedoms and human rights were restricted. Ismail Kadare thus created a watch of his own for Albania, the watch he crafted with care and Swiss finesse, thanks to a talent that seemed to have been given to him as an order from the heights - for which he would even build this cathedral. In this sense, mystical or divine, Kadare's work is a communication with and from above, so the comparison with the cathedral is also appropriate. He introduced music and image into Albanian literature, two of the assets of a cathedral.  

Kadareja made an early break with socialist realism, or the Soviet style in literature, which he despised because 'it was full of hope, spring and joy that make my mouth open'. The establishment of literature that ran parallel to and simultaneously against, contrasting with the mixed and committed socialist realism of the League of Writers, is the high service that Kadare did to his nation and his language. The reward of this difference, of this cathedral, of that something Oscar Wilde calls 'every beautiful effect creates an enemy,' Kadareja would often give, just like the character with the vulture in his homonymous novel.

Ismail Kadare became a liberating and suffocating writer for Albania. Through text, ideas, and stylistic manipulation, he created a parallel and fantastic Albania. At the same time, strongly contrasting with almost all literary and cultural creativity in the country, he became what Emile Cioran describes so well: "We turn against the admired because he undertook to raise us to his level."

The cathedral, in this place that continues to be Mars, remains.

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